Earlier this month in UnHerd Mary Harrington profiled Lauren Southern’s move from former ‘tradwife’ to almost-feminist in “Lauren Southern: how my tradlife turned toxic.” She, deceived by a man she met online, fell into a life of abuse and heartbreak. Harrington attests that Southern is just one of many ‘online’ women who have succumbed to the promises of ‘listicles’ and then been duped into a life of oppression. For her, this testifies to the truths of feminism and the need for women to safeguard themselves from similar fates.

Perhaps the first step away from the broken promises of feminism is to admit that they always were, and continue to be, impossible

Harrington only tells half of the story. Tradwifery, for all its frills, gets at a rising discontent in women who have abandoned the promises of feminism for what is perhaps the idealistic life of huswifery. Beneath the prairie dresses and sourdough recipes is a genuine desire to be provided for, to have children, and to make a warm and hospitable home. For all the decadence of this age, our wealth must come with some silver linings. The fact that a woman may not have to sacrifice her best years to an office desk, pay high rent, and subject herself to years on years of sexual exploitation should at least deserve some respect.

Radical feminism, Liberal feminism, Eco-feminism—modifiers for feminism abound. But beneath the layers of history and modification is a genuine desire for clarity. Ten years ago, Roxanne Gay attempted to explore the internal contradictions of feminism in her book Bad Feminist:

I am failing as a woman. I am failing as a feminist. To freely accept the feminist label would not be fair to good feminists. If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one. I am a mess of contradictions.

There are many ways in which I am doing feminism wrong, at least according to the way my perceptions of feminism have been warped by being a woman.

I want to be independent, but I want to be taken care of and have someone to come home to. I have a job I’m pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming need to cry at work, so I close my office door and lose it.

I want to be in charge, respected, in control, but I want to surrender, completely, in certain aspects of my life.

What Gay goes on to describe in her “Bad Feminist Manifesto” seems appealing; women can essentially fashion feminism in their own images. She paves the way for a puzzling possibility of trad-feminism (whatever that is). What she doesn’t account for is the women who may not want to be feminists at all. Is it possible to modify feminism so much that it ceases to be feminism at all?

Perhaps Gay’s bad feminisms naturally give way to antifeminism, the 80s and 90s’ response to Betty Freidan’s Feminine Mystique, wherein she unhelpfully characterizes the housewife’s ennui “the problem that has no name.” Camille Paglia, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Helen Alvare advocated for men while still identifying the unique “feminine genius” and the due protection they were owed. Perhaps their thought precedes the eventual necessity of a new modifier: impossible feminism, which negates the need for feminism, admitting that its trial period has ended and what follows will be a necessary restoration to somewhat more traditional gender norms. Trad feminity, like toxic masculinity, is easily caricatured. But what’s hidden behind that impulse is something true: sex calls every human being to reckon with his ultimate purpose in this life.

It’s helpful to return Harrington’s article tag, ‘The Online Ideology Doesn’t Work in the Real World.’ Tradwifery, often as extreme and performative as feminism, doesn’t work in the real world. The promises of feminism—total autonomy, economic success, true equality—will never be realized this side of heaven. Women who insist so embroil themselves in an endless power struggle with men and society. There are true ‘wins’ in this struggle, only varying degrees of loss. Children often lose out the most. You can have as much autonomy as you desire, you just have to negotiate it with your 2 year old.

Perhaps the first step away from the broken promises of feminism is to admit that they always were, and continue to be, impossible. Harrington herself has admitted this fact: you can’t have it all (say, a beach bod, three children under 4, a 50 hour-a-week career, and free childcare). There are sacrifices to be made, but sacrifices often sound, to modern sensibilities, like concessions, like loss. To admit one’s limitations is actually a courageous act of surrender.